ehaving like a dice-box, its disposition was
evidently to rattle him about and then throw him out again. He hung on
with the convulsive clutch of instinct until the passage lurched down
ahead. Then he would make a short run cabin-ward, and clutch again as
the fore-end rose.

Behold! He was in the cabin!

He snapped-to the door, and for a time he was not a human being, he was
a case of air-sickness. He wanted to get somewhere that would fix him,
that he needn't clutch. He opened the locker and got inside among the
loose articles, and sprawled there helplessly, with his head sometimes
bumping one side and sometimes the other. The lid shut upon him with a
click. He did not care then what was happening any more. He did not care
who fought who, or what bullets were fired or explosions occurred. He
did not care if presently he was shot or smashed to pieces. He was full
of feeble, inarticulate rage and despair. "Foolery!" he said, his one
exhaustive comment on human enterprise, adventure, war, and the chapter
of accidents that had entangled him. "Foolery! Ugh!" He included the
order of the universe in that comprehensive condemnation. He wished he
was dead.

He saw nothing of the stars, as presently the Vaterland cleared the rush
and confusion of the lower weather, nor of the duel she fought with two
circling aeroplanes, how they shot her rear-most chambers through, and
how she fought them off with explosive bullets and turned to run as she
did so.

The rush and swoop of these wonderful night birds was all lost upon him;
their heroic dash and self-sacrifice. The Vaterland was rammed, and for
some moments she hung on the verge of destruction, and sinking swiftly,
with the American aeroplane entangled with her smashed propeller, and
the Americans trying to scramble aboard. It signified nothing to Bert.
To him it conveyed itself simply as vehement swaying. Foolery! When
the American airship dropped off at last, with most of its crew shot or
fallen, Bert in his locker appreciated nothing but that the Vaterland
had taken a hideous upward leap.

But then came infinite relief, incredibly blissful relief. The rolling,
the pitching, the struggle ceased, ceased instantly and absolutely.
The Vaterland was no longer fighting the gale; her smashed and exploded
engines throbbed no more; she was disabled and driving before the wind
as smoothly as a balloon, a huge, windspread, tattered cloud of aerial
wreckage.

To Bert it was no more